


White

by Vandrerska



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, I can write but I can't tag, M/M, POV Gellert Grindelwald, but in a poetic way, i can't tag, that's basically it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:55:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23962699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vandrerska/pseuds/Vandrerska
Summary: The story Gellert Grindelwald would tell if somebody took the trouble to ask.
Relationships: Albus Dumbledore/Gellert Grindelwald
Comments: 9
Kudos: 79





	White

**Author's Note:**

  * For [IhaveAbadfeelingAboutThis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IhaveAbadfeelingAboutThis/gifts).



> Self-indulgent scribbling, really.  
> You have to thank (or curse) IhaveAbadfeelingAboutThis for the fact that this made its way to AO3 at all.  
> Not betaed, all atrocities against the English language are mine.

’Summer’ must be one of the most untranslatable words in the English language. The word differs only one letter from the German ’Sommer’, but I've lived and wandered and cursed through many a German ’Sommer’ and not a single one of them has ever come close to the English ’summer’ of 1899. But then nothing ever has. There are no other words that can even begin to claim being an adequate summary of those two months. Entire books would be needed for that, stacks and stacks of them, Alexandrian libraries filled from floor to ceiling with precious volumes.  
This is, of course, a lie. There is a word that sums up that summer perfectly, that sums up everything perfectly.  
Albus.

’Albus’ is Latin for ’white’. On the surface, that’s certainly what he looked like: pale, bordering on ghostly, as his natural complexion was reinforced by having spent so much time inside. That paleness was underlined even more by his fiery auburn hair and his crystal-blue eyes.  
Anyone who made the effort to look into those eyes, really look, could see however where Albus’ true ’whiteness’ was hidden.  
Albus Dumbledore was white in the way light is: not devoid of colour, but uniting all colours in such a dazzling way that ordinary mortals are blinded by its brilliance. They are drawn to it like moths to a flame, but their frail wings catch fire as soon as they come too close. By the time I met him, Albus had learnt – consciously or unconsciously – to shield away most of the glowing brightness. To many, to nearly all, he became a storm lantern. Few realised he was the storm.

I think it’s fair to say that I’ve accomplished things that can be ranked among the grandest and most astonishing acts of wizardy the magical world has ever witnessed – things other witches or wizards were not even capable of imagining, let alone executing – but if I were asked which accomplishment I pride myself most on in life, then, without a second thought, I would answer this: that, during two months in his life, I gave Albus Dumbledore the opportunity to explore who he was and what he was truly capable of _without having to hold back_.  
Newspaper editors, board members of magical journals, authors of modern magical history books – they all pretend to know him when they praise him as the greatest and the most powerful wizard ever to have walked the earth since Merlin. They are all inaccurate. They haven’t even caught a glimpse of the threshold of what he is capable of. They are looking at shadows in a cave. The true sun is hidden somewhere far beyond what they can imagine. And that sun has only shone uninhibitedly during that summer. When he was with me.

I offered him other opportunities as well, other areas to explore. Different forms of knowledge.  
I knew as soon as I saw his gaze flicker over me, the very first time we met on that graveyard in Godric’s Hollow. The desire. The longing. The hunger of those who don’t even know they’re hungry because all they can eat is a fruit that’s considered forbidden. Those who starve under a sky overcast with shame and denial.  
That very first day, when we said goodbye after we’d talked for two hours about the three brothers and the Hallows and about what could be achieved, what was possible if only one stopped considering it impossible – I made sure to let my fingers brush lightly across his. I heard his breath hitch in his throat, and I knew immediately: I had caused a crack.

We talked a great deal more after that, but what we said was incessantly weighed down by the torrents of what remained unsaid, especially on his part. His thoughts were never fully committing to our conversation, though the ingenuity of his thinking, his reasoning was still so baffling an outsider wouldn’t have noticed – but then I had stopped being an outsider in Albus Dumbledore’s life the moment he’d laid eyes on me.

One day, I took his hand in my hand, intertwined our fingers and said: ”I know.” There was a flicker of doubt, of shock in his eyes – the fear of having been caught. Then he laughed nervously, a laugh between breathless and desperate. ”But you know so many things,” he replied, ”So, you also know that knowledge changes, twirls and twists. New discoveries, new experiments, new experiences. How can one ever be sure?”  
”One doesn’t need to be sure forever. You can start with being sure for now.” And I leaned forward. One brilliant part of the universe towards another brilliant part of the universe. How could we not have flowed into each other beautifully. Soon his hands were in my hair, his mouth hot and open and wet against mine. ”I love you, Albus Dumbledore”, I whispered against his ear. He took my face in his hands and looked me very deep and very seriously in the eye. ”How can you be sure?” he said, with pain and longing and lust quivering at the edges of his voice. ”I’m sure for now.” I replied, ”Let’s start from there.”

People never ask me what I blame myself for most, because they invariably assume they already know the answer: that I lost a duel that put an end to all my glorious plans and earned me the miserable cell I’m currently writing this from. But supposing for a minute someone did make the effort to ask, I would answer this: what I blame myself most for is that I let Albus Dumbledore believe that he was nothing more to me than a tool or a distraction. That he wasn’t truly loved, truly cherished, truly cared for. Therefore, he could not see how everything I’ve done that summer and after that summer, everything I’ve done in my life and with my life was for him – one grand gesture at chafing away the bars behind which wizards had imprisoned themselves for centuries, that had put his father into Azkaban, and made a houseboy of a man destined to rule the world.  
I realised too late that – after that summer – every victory of mine made Albus more determined to fortify the walls of the prison he’d built for himself.

I was afraid to show him my love, simply because it was the first time in my life I felt truly afraid. When I finally dared to admit to myself what I felt for him, really felt for him, I knew immediately that this would be a relationship that had nothing in common with all the dalliances I had indulged in before. This would forever be a ménage à trois: me, him and the ever-looming possibility of losing him. I had wanted to become the Master of Death before, but I only made it my life’s mission after I’d met him. It is why I insisted on making a blood pact, not so that he couldn’t turn Death against me, but that I would always be able to chase away Death from him. For I would stand between him and the rays of Death the way the moon blocks the light from the sun during an solar eclipse: seemingly puny, but confident that it can shield the earth for a moment – or, as it believes in an instant of searing hybris: forever – from the blazing, scorching beams of the sun. I was foolish enough to believe that Death was the only way to lose a person, while it isn’t even the worst.

We made the pact in a barn, of all places, sunlight filtering through the cracks in warm long lines of flaming ochre and dancing particles of dust.

I watched the blood well up in the palm of his hand, the essence of Albus Dumbledore spilling out from a small cardinal-red line that grew thicker and thicker, until it gathered in a glistening pearl. A tear.  
I watched the blood well up in my own hand and all I could think of when we pressed our hands together was how the fear of loss, of losing him, that had circulated in my veins and made them freeze, would soon be circulating in his as well.  
Then his fingers intertwined with mine, and how could I continue considering loss when he was so close, when I could taste the shuddering breath he drew on my tongue? When all I wanted was to draw more of those breaths, those shudders out of him?

So, we made love, for the first time. In that barn, of all places.

He was afraid, I could tell.  
It wasn’t the physical part that scared him, though he didn’t have any experience with that either. He was afraid to let me unwrap him, to let me take away more than just layers of clothes, afraid that I would find out that in the end he was nothing more than one of those oriental origami crane birds, beautiful when twisted into intricate poses, but nothing more than a plain piece of paper when unfolded. My beloved Albus, how could you not see that behind each of your horizons, there simply lay another stunning view, another horizon to be explored?

People assume that being obeyed by thousands and being feared by millions is what gives you the headiest, most grandiose feeling of power – as always, they’re wrong.  
The giddiest, the most addictive, the most ecstatic power I’ve experienced in my life was during that afternoon, when Albus entrusted himself fully to me. Power has never felt so fragile and therefore so intoxicating as at the moment when I asked Albus, sweating and panting, if I could and he nodded, closed his eyes and relaxed under me. Contrary to what everyone may think, I didn’t feel triumphant, as if I had finally claimed what I considered to be rightfully mine. I felt as if I was holding the most delicate piece of the universe – a universe in its own right – in my hands. I could only pray I wasn’t ever going to let it slip through my fingers.

Of course it did. He did.  
We were two brilliant stars in a world that was determined to let itself be lit only by candlelight. Of course, that world was set on letting us crash into and annihilate one another – and then rotate on, calmly, pretending it had done mankind a great favour.

I never meant for Ariana to die.  
I don’t know who killed her. Albus, Aberforth, me? Maybe Ariana herself?  
I know that I couldn’t stand seeing Albus suffer any longer under the outrageous accusations of his brother, that worm who’d live his whole life buried under the earth of mediocrity and an utterly narrow sense of duty. I wanted to hurt the vermin that ate away at my precious Albus. I wanted to see him suffer. So I made him suffer.  
And in the process, I killed what was most dear to me. Not Ariana, but Albus, my exquisite lilac blossom, that shrivelled away the moment the lifeless body of his sister hit the floor.  
The English summer had come to an end.

I’ve witnessed many a summer since. Summers are always thought of as sweet, and to a certain extent they are. German summers taste of strawberries, French summers taste of overripe peaches. Italian summers taste of sweet late evening pastries.  
But nothing can ever rival the English summer, that has the sweetest taste of all, for it tastes forever of the lips of Albus Dumbledore.

I was his first, in many respects, yes, but he was my last, in all. And though many had come before him, many he must think bitterly meant as much to me as he did, namely nothing at all - my only.

Did Albus Dumbledore lust for power as much as I did? Of course he did. He was equally hungry, equally greedy, equally addicted. Only, in their chase for the high, not all addicts are galloping on the same substance. His preferred drug were the long, slowly creeping tendrils of machinations and subtle manipulations that strangle a system from within. I needed the orgastic delirium of beleaguering the system from the outside, of seeing the bulwark crumble under the force of my magic, my vision, our vision. I needed to see the defeat in the eyes of the defeated, needed them to know very clearly who had put it there.  
I realised too late that our difference in tactics was more than a formality.

People always think I am the one who was sentenced to life imprisonment after that famous so-called duel in 1945.  
But then people never truly think, do they?  
I was, and I still am, free within these four stone walls. My mind was never forced to go into hiding because it displayed its power and the vision it held unabashedly. Most couldn’t bear to look at it, but it was there, in the open, for all to see.  
He had been a walking prison ever since that summer of 1899.

And now he has died, and while Death definitely isn’t the worst way to lose someone, this loss has a finality to it that even the stone walls in my cell seem to understand.  
For the second time in my life the world is dominated by white. Only a different white this time. No longer the ultimate synthesis of everything colourful, everything glorious, everything brilliant, but a void. A black hole that sucks all meaning into it, and leaves only absence behind.  
White, but no longer Albus.

History books will claim that I have tried to become a master of Death, but that’s another lie. The biggest of them all. I have tried to become a master of life, both by taking those lives I didn’t consider worthy of existing and by protecting one other life that my very own existence depended upon. I know nothing of Death.  
So I don’t know if Albus, my Albus, is still there somewhere. I don’t even know if concepts as ’somewhere’ and ’being’ still apply, once you’ve crossed that final border.  
But if they do, I hope he has not ended up in whatever prison looks like after death. If anything, I hope he’s been granted to live in an English summer. And if he hasn’t, if for some cruel reason it is prison after all, then I will happily die and lock myself inside with him, for all eternity. Even wandless and wordless, I think I could manage to conjure up that summer for him, again.


End file.
